


Giving "The Talk"

by Kittywitch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Looms (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: Adric asks the Doctor an uncomfortable question and the Doctor gives an inventive answer.





	

           “Doctor?” asked Adric, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. It would have been truer to say that the boy appeared out or a patch of console room that the Doctor was not paying attention to, as it wasn’t the roundel he was adjusting, but as far as the Doctor was concerned that was more or less the same thing as appearing out of nowhere.

           “What is it, Adric?” the Doctor asked, only slightly irritably. He took a piece of wiring out of the roundel and, being quite sure that it was fully disconnected from the Tardis, carefully held it in his teeth by a long, green grounding wire. Most of the grounding wires in the Tardis  _weren’t_  green, which was probably what was causing the problem with this roundel.

           “I’ve got a question.”

           “Hm?” the Doctor prompted, but it was more or less all he could say with a circuit suspended from his mouth.

           “Where _is it_  that babies come from?” asked Adric. The wiring dropped from the Doctor’s mouth.

 

 

           The timelord cleared his throat tersely, adjusted his grip on the sonic screwdriver, picked up the circuit, and pretended that he hadn’t heard the boy’s question at all. There were many things he wanted to do today, but none of them were talking to Adric about the birds and the vortisaurs.

           “Doctor?”

           “Oh, surely you know that!” the Doctor scoffed. “You’re a bright boy, you’re almost a--well, you’re nearly--you’re clearly having whatever passes for puberty on Alzarius, you’re winding me up and I simply won’t have it.”

           “Yes, on Alzarius,” Adric replied earnestly.  _Too_  earnestly, the Doctor thought. “But we aren’t on Alzarius. We aren’t even in E-space. I don’t want to seem some sort of idiot if it works differently here. Everyone already thinks I’m an embarrassment, I don’t want to make the matter worse.”

           “ _...and yet here we are..._ ” the Doctor grumbled, fishing in his pocket for a knife to strip a wire with. He cleared his throat loudly.

 

           “Well, I can’t answer that question simply. There’s hundreds of species here, and it’s all quite different depending on the biology. You’re best looking in a textbook, really.”

           "Alright, if it’s a matter of biology, then I’ll ask Nyssa.” Adric shrugged nonchalantly, although to the Doctor’s ears it sounded more like a threat. If there was a dog around, it might have confirmed that the Doctor had said, “ _No, don’t ask Nyssa!_ ” but their voice had gone to high and squeaky for Adric to understand.

 

           “For example--” the Doctor said, his mouth committing to the words before his brain thought of words to follow it. “--uh, timelords... well, timelords don’t like to leave anything to chance, do we? No, that’s far too messy and complicated. We... uh, well--” 

           The Doctor floundered, hoping that Adric would interpret this as awkwardness and not making it up as he went along.

           “--we take the--the genetic material from past timelords, dead ones who aren’t using it anymore, and we disassemble it and put it back together as a new timelord. Well, a new Gallifreyan, sometimes a timelord, sometimes a timelady, sometimes not."

           “Oh, like genetic engineering?” Adric asked, 

           “Yes.” said the Doctor, clearly relieved. “On, uh, looms, actually.” 

           “Huh.” said Adric. “Looms?”

           “Yes. Genetic looms.” the Doctor repeated, feeling slightly more confident. “We take the genetic material from other timelords, ones from our family who aren’t alive anymore, take it all apart, and the loom reassembles it differently to make a different timelord. It’s all very complicated.”

 

           “That all sounds very fascinating,” said Adric. “And a lot more scientific than it happens on Alzarius, we just have sex.” The Doctor nearly hit his head against the wall. Adric could  _not_  have been doing this accidently.

**Author's Note:**

> I could really go either way on the looms personally, so I tried to leave it up to interpretation as to whether or not the Doctor was making this all up to avoid talking to Adric about sex or just describing the least-sexy way of reproduction he could think of to avoid talking to Adric about sex.


End file.
